PM Prayut blames previous governments for water shortage

[matman]

In Thailand whatever happens - its always someone else's fault

[ginjag]

"...insisted that the government had made preparations to cope with the drought problem since last year and had done its best to ease the problem..."

If this is true then why wasn't water rationing started much sooner?

You are joking and postpone April water festival--Song Khran, Have to have water to throw around like silly kids---way over the top from it/s actual festival.

After Song Khran all are crying we HAB NO NAM. stupid.

[smutcakes]

Earlier he blamed the water shortage on the previous rice scheme using too much water. Now the previous govt. did not manage the dams.

Oh and 14 students were agitated by a 'politician outside the country'. And the bombs in the south are due to the two political parties.

There's only one thing leaky here.

"Now the previous govt. did not manage the dams." And he is exactly RIGHT. Yingluk ordered the operating curves of the major storage dams changed to a lower level because she did not want to be blamed for mismanagement of another flood. Between Jan and July 2012, 7.5 billion Cubic Metres of additional water (ie over and above normal level reduction) were dumped from Bhumipol and Sirikit Dams, the 2 largest, despite obvious evidence an el Nino event was imminent.

From October 2012 the levels in these dams dropped below the new lower storage levels and have never recovered back to that operating level.

http://www.thaiwater.net/DATA/REPORT/php/rid_dam_1.php?lang=en

Clicking on each dam will produce an inter-active graph (which I can't link to) giving daily levels in each of the dams.

His statement regarding catchment areas sounds off to me, but the allegation that Yingluk AGAIN mismanaged dams is indisputable.

I have no idea how you stipulate all that from the link you posted, i expect as is becoming more frequent than normal recently, as soon as you come out with something and are asked to back it up, you just disappear.

Maybe you can highlight your credentials in water management? and the variances of El Nino, and could tell the Thai Govt what 'obvious' signs you are reading from El Nino at the moment for the next 3 years. You are so full of crap its laughable.

I would imagine the water professionals in place now, in that department are exactly the same ones who have been their for the past 20 years. When a new Govt comes in, they don't just sack everyone you know???

[Emster23]

Partially correct in this case.

Even a blind squirrel finds a few nuts.....

And just what has his unelected government done to correct this? Or they didn't know, or care to know. Much more important to focus on sexy dressing TV show girls.

[halloween]

"Now the previous govt. did not manage the dams." And he is exactly RIGHT. Yingluk ordered the operating curves of the major storage dams changed to a lower level because she did not want to be blamed for mismanagement of another flood. Between Jan and July 2012, 7.5 billion Cubic Metres of additional water (ie over and above normal level reduction) were dumped from Bhumipol and Sirikit Dams, the 2 largest, despite obvious evidence an el Nino event was imminent.

From October 2012 the levels in these dams dropped below the new lower storage levels and have never recovered back to that operating level.

http://www.thaiwater.net/DATA/REPORT/php/rid_dam_1.php?lang=en

Clicking on each dam will produce an inter-active graph (which I can't link to) giving daily levels in each of the dams.

His statement regarding catchment areas sounds off to me, but the allegation that Yingluk AGAIN mismanaged dams is indisputable.

I have no idea how you stipulate all that from the link you posted, i expect as is becoming more frequent than normal recently, as soon as you come out with something and are asked to back it up, you just disappear.

Maybe you can highlight your credentials in water management? and the variances of El Nino, and could tell the Thai Govt what 'obvious' signs you are reading from El Nino at the moment for the next 3 years. You are so full of crap its laughable.

I would imagine the water professionals in place now, in that department are exactly the same ones who have been their for the past 20 years. When a new Govt comes in, they don't just sack everyone you know???

I am well aware you have no idea, that's why you resort to name calling and slurs. But I will attempt to show you how to read the graphs, using small words as much as possible.

Open the link.

click on Bhumipol (it is blue in the top left of table)

a second window will open on your browser. if you can't find it, ask a child to help you.

on the right is a slider with years. click on 2012 and then click on "show"

the red line shows the drop from upper operating curve to lower, and falling below as described above.

close the window

click on Bhumipol again

the yellow curve is 2013, the blue 2014, the red 2015. Dam levels have never recovered to the lower operating curve.

the difference between the upper and lower operating curves averages around 4 billion cubic metres.

repeat for Sirikit. The difference in the level curves is around 3 billion cubic metres

If you don't understand that el Nino is a cyclic weather pattern, and that a number of factors precede change, try to educate yourself.

[Eric Loh]

Now who's to be blamed for canceling the water manegement projects in June last year. The blame game continue. When is he going to man up and face the challenges.

Remember your last PTP water minister admitted after the big floods that he failed to release water early enough, the when the monsoons came water overflowed and flooded Thailand---DID YOU FORGET THIS.??

Where did the money go after when the Yingluck government were to put it all right so it would never happen again, But it will happen because most money disappeared.

Now we have drought, and in 1 year governing you think that the dry areas can all be given wells...NEVER in 1 year no where in the world can any government do that.

Where did the money go that was given to dredge the canals, so they could hold water when it came.??

Most of the PTP arrangements had to be cancelled because they were NOT managed properly and corruption rife--hence the cancel bit.

Totally confused. Is there a Water Minister and can you provide quote to what he said? You are also lumping the short term and long term programs together. The short term immediate after the flood was for flood rehabilitation and providing confidence to the foreign companies like building flood wall barriers and retention area. The cancellation was for the long term project by the junta. When you put things in proper perspective, you can see that the short term programs were achieved but not the long term which is a big mistake.

[wabothai]

we know, it is all the former governments fault.

Take them to court you silly man.

Edited July 20, 2015 by wabothai

[chainarong]

Firstly Prime Minister Prayut - O isn't telling us something we don't already know , secondly why the rush for H/speed trains , submarines and what not when this important but not attractive vote getter is in a sad state of decay , surely on the first week after unofficially installing themselves in power the round table discussion should have mentioned the water supply problems as a first priority , no , by the second week we are all off to China to play trains, get the priorities right chaps, otherwise the best investment in Thailand will be bottled water production.

[lvr181]

Now, I am sure that some TV readers have seen the huge canals in California shifting water around for irrigation (?) but I guess Thai authorities do not want to know of a similar solution that may help Thailand.

It is always easier to find reasons NOT to do something rather than ways to do it!

[lvr181]

Now who's to be blamed for canceling the water manegement projects in June last year. The blame game continue. When is he going to man up and face the challenges.

Remember your last PTP water minister admitted after the big floods that he failed to release water early enough, the when the monsoons came water overflowed and flooded Thailand---DID YOU FORGET THIS.??

Where did the money go after when the Yingluck government were to put it all right so it would never happen again, But it will happen because most money disappeared.

Now we have drought, and in 1 year governing you think that the dry areas can all be given wells...NEVER in 1 year no where in the world can any government do that.

Where did the money go that was given to dredge the canals, so they could hold water when it came.??

Most of the PTP arrangements had to be cancelled because they were NOT managed properly and corruption rife--hence the cancel bit.

Totally confused. Is there a Water Minister and can you provide quote to what he said? You are also lumping the short term and long term programs together. The short term immediate after the flood was for flood rehabilitation and providing confidence to the foreign companies like building flood wall barriers and retention area. The cancellation was for the long term project by the junta. When you put things in proper perspective, you can see that the short term programs were achieved but not the long term which is a big mistake.

"......is there a Water Minister..........." Not really sure but there are plenty of Ministers who could do with a big tap on the head!

Sadly that still will not help the country

[SOUTHERNSTAR]

Now who's to be blamed for canceling the water manegement projects in June last year. The blame game continue. When is he going to man up and face the challenges.

Would those be the projects PTP wanted to enforce on people without any EIA's and public discussion Eric? Where the prime contractor would seemingly be a certain Korean supplier who had hosted Dr. Thaksin and be awarded with the usual opaque transparency? The ones where Plod called protesters "garbage".

The PM is right. Previous governments (notice the plural) have failed miserably in their water management and associated environmental projects. Do you think they got it right?

Now he has the chance to do something about it. They didn't, but what and when are the current government going to do anything more than dig wells. Needs a detailed integrated plan. Anyone working on this?

When YS wanted to implement a water management system (the one canceled by the junta), there was huge protest by the people, during the consultation meetings. These people would have had to scarifice their land to build the water ways to divert the water around BKK. These water ways was part of a project for K water to develop a comprehensive water management system (part of the B 350 bn projects). Instead of retaining the water management system and restarting the consultation proses for the flood prevention schemes, everything was thrown out by the junta. At this time the junta said that they will use the B 350 bn for drought assistance to farmers. Unfortunately this money disappeared (not meaning stolen it just was not used as it was supposed to) and to my knowledge there was no money spend on drought assistance schemes during the 2014 financial year. If I remember correctly this was about July 2014, them they said they going to use the funds for drought relief. This means that the present government knew in July 2014 that there was a drought, but they didnt adapt the outflow rates of the dams at the end of the 2014 rainfall season. Only them the dams reached the 10% to 15% capacity level did they start to react. This is way too late and it reflects derelict of duty by the civil servants thats in charge of these dams.

Without a proper management system and accountable civil servants this will not be the last drought and we can wait for the next flood. A water management system on its own is a dead computer program, you need smart and dedicated people to run this system. At present the people thats responsible for water management totals about 20 plus departments and no one takes responsibility for it. As background to this civil service problem in Thailand you should read the Opinion piece in todays BKK post - "The pragmatic critic".

[halloween]

When YS wanted to implement a water management system (the one canceled by the junta), there was huge protest by the people, during the consultation meetings. These people would have had to scarifice their land to build the water ways to divert the water around BKK. These water ways was part of a project for K water to develop a comprehensive water management system (part of the B 350 bn projects). Instead of retaining the water management system and restarting the consultation proses for the flood prevention schemes, everything was thrown out by the junta. At this time the junta said that they will use the B 350 bn for drought assistance to farmers. Unfortunately this money disappeared (not meaning stolen it just was not used as it was supposed to) and to my knowledge there was no money spend on drought assistance schemes during the 2014 financial year. If I remember correctly this was about July 2014, them they said they going to use the funds for drought relief. This means that the present government knew in July 2014 that there was a drought, but they didnt adapt the outflow rates of the dams at the end of the 2014 rainfall season. Only them the dams reached the 10% to 15% capacity level did they start to react. This is way too late and it reflects derelict of duty by the civil servants thats in charge of these dams.

Without a proper management system and accountable civil servants this will not be the last drought and we can wait for the next flood. A water management system on its own is a dead computer program, you need smart and dedicated people to run this system. At present the people thats responsible for water management totals about 20 plus departments and no one takes responsibility for it. As background to this civil service problem in Thailand you should read the Opinion piece in todays BKK post - "The pragmatic critic".

Flood management schemes don't have much to do with low levels in dams. Dam levels fell below the lower operating curve in Oct 2012, and because of high demand due to the rice scam and lack of serious rain, they have steadily declined.

To continue your argument, if so much water hadn't been dumped and/or demand for irrigation water kept so high, those dams would still be in reasonable shape, drought relief would be confined to non-irrigators, and the flood relief work might still have funding.

[englishoak]

Wasnt the Arny also previous government a scant few years ago ?

Go look in the mirror PM

[DM07]

SUR- PRIIIIIISE!

[halloween]

Wasnt the Arny also previous government a scant few years ago ?

Go look in the mirror PM

Only if "scant few" equals 7.5 (or 9.25 if you wish count the junta appointed civilian government as non-military).

Don't you remember the calls of 'coup overdue'?

[1duckyboy]

Tomorrow's headline, "No Clouds to Seed Blamed on Previous Government".

[ikke]

The culprit is the Army only. Thaksin had a plan to solve once for all those problems of drought and floods, but after the 2006 coup the project was scrapped by the army and the money used to buy weapons instead.

And from 2011, he couldn't improve infrastructure because the money was needed to prop up the rice scam.

LABLABLA.....You have any idea how much a coup actually cost ? Would be enough to serve all African countries with drinking water....

[Kannikapor88]

Always somebody elses fault here ... Be a man and take the blame for once - even if its not your fault ... Acting like small kids all the time - seeing it too much its not cute anymore just anoying you small man child

[elgordo38]

"we are doing our best".......such a common cry from the incompetants managing Thailand...past and present!

He will be the last man standing if the drought continues and he will have a bottle of water in each hand. We are doing our best? is that to stay in power? Don't forget the story about the little boy who cried "Wolf!!!"

[wow64]

I didnt do it and I dont know how to fix it.... Rain dance time.

Sent from my c64

[Thai at Heart]

They can keep the damn full, farm like crazy and risk flooding or they can lower the level and farm less.

You can't have it both ways.

[mojorison]

They can keep the damn full, farm like crazy and risk flooding or they can lower the level and farm less.

You can't have it both ways.

You could also consult an international team of experts and make an extremely educated and scientific decision based on global forecasting and the digestion of gigabytes of data and satellite imagery, or you could shimmy on down to the local maw doo, tum boon a bit, sprinkle some magic water, light some bangers and let 45% go down the drain months earlier. Prepared to blame someone else if it goes awry, or bathe in the glory if it works out OK. (Yeah, it's a pun)

[halloween]

They can keep the damn full, farm like crazy and risk flooding or they can lower the level and farm less.

You can't have it both ways.

Or they can use the operating curves, upper or lower, or somewhere between, depending on long range forecast

[SOUTHERNSTAR]

Now who's to be blamed for canceling the water manegement projects in June last year. The blame game continue. When is he going to man up and face the challenges.

Remember your last PTP water minister admitted after the big floods that he failed to release water early enough, the when the monsoons came water overflowed and flooded Thailand---DID YOU FORGET THIS.??

Where did the money go after when the Yingluck government were to put it all right so it would never happen again, But it will happen because most money disappeared.

Now we have drought, and in 1 year governing you think that the dry areas can all be given wells...NEVER in 1 year no where in the world can any government do that.

Where did the money go that was given to dredge the canals, so they could hold water when it came.??

Most of the PTP arrangements had to be cancelled because they were NOT managed properly and corruption rife--hence the cancel bit.

Why do you lie like this. The floods took place in September to December 2011. The PTP government took office in middle August 2011. If you wanted to lower the level of the dams to avoid flooding downstream water had to be let out over a 3 month period. So your lies don't tie up. There isnt 3 months between middle August and middle September. The Dems was in power untill middle August and the flood was already building up and areas such as Singburi was already flooded, but they did nothing to prevent the flood reaching BKK. If you want to confirm this search for NASA images taken at that time. PTP spend money (B 80 bn) on building flood walls at the industrial estates and all of these walls have been completed. PTP provided funds to the BMA to dredge canals in BKK and remove water plants that prevents water flowing. Dredging is however not a once off task, it must be repeated on an annual basis. The present government have provided zero Baht for these tasks.

The present government canceled the B 350 bn flood prevention projects, which included a water management system, the system that could have prevented the present chaos. They also stated publicaly that this B 350 bn would be used for drought related projects. None of these drought projects ever materialised. This is however a dead give away that they knew about the pending drought already last year and did nothing to prevent its impact. Why didnt they cut the outflows from dams when they knew there was a drought ? Why did they not react on the international warnings of a pending El Nino ? Incompetence or arrogance or false belief in rain dances ?

Can you please provide proof of any flood related funds been stolen by PTP? Any I mean I will even accept an article written by BKK Post in which they speculate that some of the B 80 bn was stolen with even meager evidence. Untill today the present government have never ever mentioned corruption in the spending of the B 80 bn, but you offcourse know better and more than them.

As none of the B 350 bn was ever spend on the flood prevention projects how could any corruption have taken place. Please explain how this is possible. Your dear great leader canceled all of the projects and after that there is no trace of what the money was used for. Maybe it was used for other projects or for salary increases or it never got spend, but there was never a public explanation of what this funds was used for. I am not saying they stole the money, just saying the public lost track of the funds.

[nidieunimaitre]

The title of the article says he blamed previous governments.

The article says he blamed previous elected governments.

There is a difference.

Also we know that the "s" is not very popular amongst Thais, so is it government or governmentS?

Since the source for this is Thai journalism, we will never know.

But we can rule out that he blamed "all the previous elected and coup governments".

[halloween]

Now who's to be blamed for canceling the water manegement projects in June last year. The blame game continue. When is he going to man up and face the challenges.

Remember your last PTP water minister admitted after the big floods that he failed to release water early enough, the when the monsoons came water overflowed and flooded Thailand---DID YOU FORGET THIS.??

Where did the money go after when the Yingluck government were to put it all right so it would never happen again, But it will happen because most money disappeared.

Now we have drought, and in 1 year governing you think that the dry areas can all be given wells...NEVER in 1 year no where in the world can any government do that.

Where did the money go that was given to dredge the canals, so they could hold water when it came.??

Most of the PTP arrangements had to be cancelled because they were NOT managed properly and corruption rife--hence the cancel bit.

Why do you lie like this. The floods took place in September to December 2011. The PTP government took office in middle August 2011. If you wanted to lower the level of the dams to avoid flooding downstream water had to be let out over a 3 month period. So your lies don't tie up. There isnt 3 months between middle August and middle September. The Dems was in power untill middle August and the flood was already building up and areas such as Singburi was already flooded, but they did nothing to prevent the flood reaching BKK. If you want to confirm this search for NASA images taken at that time. PTP spend money (B 80 bn) on building flood walls at the industrial estates and all of these walls have been completed. PTP provided funds to the BMA to dredge canals in BKK and remove water plants that prevents water flowing. Dredging is however not a once off task, it must be repeated on an annual basis. The present government have provided zero Baht for these tasks.

The present government canceled the B 350 bn flood prevention projects, which included a water management system, the system that could have prevented the present chaos. They also stated publicaly that this B 350 bn would be used for drought related projects. None of these drought projects ever materialised. This is however a dead give away that they knew about the pending drought already last year and did nothing to prevent its impact. Why didnt they cut the outflows from dams when they knew there was a drought ? Why did they not react on the international warnings of a pending El Nino ? Incompetence or arrogance or false belief in rain dances ?

Can you please provide proof of any flood related funds been stolen by PTP? Any I mean I will even accept an article written by BKK Post in which they speculate that some of the B 80 bn was stolen with even meager evidence. Untill today the present government have never ever mentioned corruption in the spending of the B 80 bn, but you offcourse know better and more than them.

As none of the B 350 bn was ever spend on the flood prevention projects how could any corruption have taken place. Please explain how this is possible. Your dear great leader canceled all of the projects and after that there is no trace of what the money was used for. Maybe it was used for other projects or for salary increases or it never got spend, but there was never a public explanation of what this funds was used for. I am not saying they stole the money, just saying the public lost track of the funds.

Calling someone else a liar and then showing your own ignorance is neither polite or clever. Flood peaks are slow moving and it was known one was working its way down river. The sensible and logical thing to do was to drop water heavily from the downstream dams, to the extent of causing minor flooding, to allow a buffer in those dams. This would have allowed the highest flood level to be ameliorated, but it wasn't done so as to allow the downstream farmers to harvest their crop, and gain the benefit of the rice scam's higher prices.

[BuckBee]

Any long term plans being drawn up on improving water problems then mr prayut . will mean educated technical debate/calculation, spending some money & real work :-/ probably not then ! hows the lottery tickets going lol :-P

[Fat Haggis]

More to the point, what's being done right now, that will reduce the problem of water shortage that will inevitably arise (no pun intended) next year at the same time?

[wwest5829]

Earlier he blamed the water shortage on the previous rice scheme using too much water. Now the previous govt. did not manage the dams.

Oh and 14 students were agitated by a 'politician outside the country'. And the bombs in the south are due to the two political parties.

There's only one thing leaky here.

"Now the previous govt. did not manage the dams." And he is exactly RIGHT. Yingluk ordered the operating curves of the major storage dams changed to a lower level because she did not want to be blamed for mismanagement of another flood. Between Jan and July 2012, 7.5 billion Cubic Metres of additional water (ie over and above normal level reduction) were dumped from Bhumipol and Sirikit Dams, the 2 largest, despite obvious evidence an el Nino event was imminent.

From October 2012 the levels in these dams dropped below the new lower storage levels and have never recovered back to that operating level.

http://www.thaiwater.net/DATA/REPORT/php/rid_dam_1.php?lang=en

Clicking on each dam will produce an inter-active graph (which I can't link to) giving daily levels in each of the dams.

His statement regarding catchment areas sounds off to me, but the allegation that Yingluk AGAIN mismanaged dams is indisputable.

Hmm, OK, but what does the accused mismanage the of water in 2012 have to do with the current water shortage? I am truly a little confused on that point.

[rametindallas]

The culprit is the Army only. Thaksin had a plan to solve once for all those problems of drought and floods, but after the 2006 coup the project was scrapped by the army and the money used to buy weapons instead.

Yeah, and he was going to make all Thais rich in six months too. Obviously you believed him.

.